Convicted killer of two truck drivers executed in Texas

A man convicted of the road-rage killings of two truck drivers was executed in Texas on Wednesday, July 31.

Even in the final moments of his life, Douglas Alan Feldman, 55, who admitted to killing Robert Stephen Everett, 36, of Marshfield, Mo., and Nicolas Velasquez, 62, of Irving, Texas, blamed the victims for their own deaths.

Photo courtesy of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice

On Wednesday, July 31, Douglas Feldman, convicted of killing two truck drivers, was executed in Huntsville, Texas.

Jason January, former Dallas County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Feldman, told “Land Line Now” on Thursday, Aug. 1, that Feldman showed no remorse as he was about to be executed. January, along with three family members of each of the victims, attended Feldman’s execution in Huntsville, Texas, on Wednesday.

January said Feldman read a prepared statement prior to being put to death: “I hear by declare Robert Stephen Everett and Nicolas Velasquez guilty of crimes against me, Douglas Alan Feldman, either by fact or by proxy. I find them both guilty. I hear by sentence both of them to death, which I carried out in August 1998, as of that time the state of Texas has been holding me illegally in confinement and by force for 15 years. I hear by protest my pending execution and demand immediate relief.”

January said Feldman displayed similar behavior at his trial 15 years ago before he was sentenced to death in September 1999 for killing Everett and Velasquez.

He said Feldman “had rage that carried on throughout his whole life.”

“He kept his rage consistent for decades up until yesterday when he was executed,” January said Thursday. “He still had rage and was anti-remorseful. He was still attacking the victims to the very, very end.”

Feldman’s final clemency petition with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles was turned down on July. 29. His other appeals, including the U.S. Supreme Court, were also rejected.

According to court documents, on Aug. 24, 1998, Feldman chased Everett on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, firing shots into the back of Everett’s trailer, near Plano, Texas, after the truck driver allegedly cut him off on the highway. When Everett didn’t stop, Feldman then pulled up alongside the truck driver and “fired several times directly at Everett, killing him.”

The police report states that Feldman fired a total of 12 shots into Everett’s truck.

After killing Everett, he then pulled into a mall parking lot for a time, then decided to ride back to where Everett’s truck was stopped “to determine whether Everett was dead,” according to court documents.

Approximately 45 minutes later, Feldman spotted another truck driver, Nicolas Velasquez, a tanker truck driver who worked for Exxon, who was filling the ground tanks at an Exxon gas station. Feldman fired four shots, hitting Velasquez twice in the back, killing him.

At trial, Feldman admitted that he shot Velasquez because he was still angry about the road-rage altercation with Everett previously.

More than a week later, Feldman “drove by and opened fire” on Antonio Vega, who was talking on a pay phone at a fast-food restaurant. Vega was injured, but survived. A witness at the scene wrote down Feldman’s license plate, which led to his arrest.

Ballistics tests proved that the nine-millimeter weapon recovered from Feldman had been used in all three shootings, according to police.

January, who is in private practice in Dallas now, said Feldman had racked up hundreds of prison violations in the 15 years on death row, including throwing feces at prison guards.

“He remained defiant and belligerent and dangerous until the very end,” January said.

Feldman was among the 21 people who have been executed in the U.S. in 2013; 11 of them have been in Texas.